Let’s Talk About What’s Happening to VMware, Inc

Heading into the close, a volume-active day saw VMware, Inc. (NYSE:VMW) moving down $-6.32 from the opening price. The volume for the company on May 20, 2019 consisted of nearly 1101487 contracts traded. Over the past one week, the average daily trading volume came in at about 988180 shares per day. The regular trading started at $203.64 but as the trading continued, the stock receded, settling the day with a fall of -3.1%. Its shares are now trading at $197.32 apiece.

Spotlight

Curvature

Curvature is the world’s leading global technology equipment and services company. Based in Santa Barbara, California, Curvature has revolutionized the pre-owned market of networking and data center equipment, providing customers with global solutions from corporate locations in the Americas, Europe and Asia.

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Server Hypervisors

VMware NSX 3.2 Delivers New, Advanced Security Capabilities

Article | September 9, 2022

It’s an impactful release focused on significant NSX Security enhancements Putting a hard shell around a soft core is not a recipe for success in security, but somehow legacy security architectures for application protection have often looked exactly like that: a hard perimeter firewall layer for an application infrastructure that was fundamentally not built with security as a primary concern. VMware NSX Distributed Firewall pioneered the micro-segmentation concept for granular access controls for cloud applications with the initial launch of the product in 2013. The promise of Zero Trust security for applications, the simplicity of deployment of the solution, and the ease of achieving internal security objectives made NSX an instant success for security-sensitive customers. Our newest release — NSX-T 3.2 — establishes a new marker for securing application infrastructure by introducing significant new features to identify and respond to malware and ransomware attacks in the network, to enhance user identification and L7 application identification capabilities, and, at the same time, to simplify deployment of the product for our customers. Modern day security teams need to secure mission-critical infrastructure from both external and internal attacks. By providing unprecedented threat visibility leveraging IDS, NTA, and Network Detection and Response (NDR) capabilities along with granular controls leveraging L4-L7 Firewall, IPS, and Malware Prevention capabilities, NSX 3.2 delivers an incredible security solution for our customers“ Umesh Mahajan, SVP, GM (Networking and Security Business Unit) Distributed Advanced Threat Prevention (ATP) Attackers often use multiple sophisticated techniques to penetrate the network, move laterally within the network in a stealthy manner, and exfiltrate critical data at an appropriate time. Micro-segmentation solutions focused solely on access control can reduce the attack surface — but cannot provide the detection and prevention technologies needed to thwart modern attacks. NSX-T 3.2 introduces several new capabilities focused on detection and prevention of attacks inside the network. Of critical note is that these advanced security solutions do not need network taps, separate monitoring networks, or agents inside each and every workload. Distributed Malware Prevention Lastline’s highly reputed dynamic malware technology is now integrated with NSX Distributed Firewall to deliver an industry-first Distributed Malware Prevention solution. Leveraging the integration with Lastline, a Distributed Firewall embedded within the hypervisor kernel can now identify both “known malicious” as well as “zero day” malware Distributed Behavioral IDS Whereas earlier versions of NSX Distributed IDPS (Intrusion Detection and Prevention System) delivered primarily signature-based detection of intrusions, NSX 3.2 introduces “behavioral” intrusion detection capabilities as well. Even if specific IDS signatures are not triggered, this capability helps customers know whether a workload is seeing any behavioral anomalies, like DNS tunneling or beaconing, for example, that could be a cause for concern. Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) For customers interested in baselining network-wide behavior and identifying anomalous behavior at the aggregated network level, NSX-T 3.2 introduces Distributed Network Traffic Analysis (NTA). Network-wide anomalies like lateral movement, suspicious RDP traffic, and malicious interactions with the Active Directory server, for example, can alert security teams about attacks underway and help them take quick remediation actions. Network Detection and Response (NDR) Alert overload, and resulting fatigue, is a real challenge among security teams. Leveraging advanced AI/ML techniques, the NSX-T 3.2 Network Detection and Response solution consolidates security IOCs from different detection systems like IDS, NTA, malware detection. etc., to provide a ”campaign view” that shows specific attacks in play at that point in time. MITRE ATT&CK visualization helps customers see the specific stage in the kill chain of individual attacks, and the ”time sequence” view helps understand the sequence of events that contributed to the attack on the network. Key Firewall Enhancements While delivering new Advanced Threat Prevention capabilities is one key emphasis for the NSX-T 3.2 release, providing meaningful enhancements for core firewalling capabilities is an equally critical area of innovation. Distributed Firewall for VDS Switchports While NSX-T has thus far supported workloads connected to both overlay-based N-VDS switchports as well as VLAN-based switchports, customers had to move the VLAN switchports from VDS to N-VDS before a Distributed Firewall could be enforced. With NSX-T 3.2, native VLAN DVPGs are supported as-is, without having to move to N-VDS. Effectively, Distributed Security can be achieved in a completely seamless manner without having to modify any networking constructs. Distributed Firewall workflows in vCenter With NSX-T 3.2, we are introducing the ability to create and modify Distributed Firewall rules natively within vCenter. For small- to medium-sized VMware customers, this feature simplifies the user experience by eliminating the need to leverage a separate NSX Manager interface. Advanced User Identification for Distributed and Gateway Firewalls NSX supported user identity-based access control in earlier releases. With NSX-T 3.2, we’re introducing the ability to directly connect to Microsoft Active Directory to support user identity mapping. In addition, for customers who do not use Active Directory for user authentication, NSX also supports VMware vRealize LogInsight as an additional method to carry out user identity mapping. This feature enhancement is applicable for both NSX Distributed Firewall as well as NSX Gateway Firewall. Enhanced L7 Application Identification for Distributed and Gateway Firewalls NSX supported Layer-7 application identification-based access control in earlier releases. With NSX-T 3.2, we are enhancing the signature set to about 750 applications. While several perimeter firewall vendors claim a larger set of Layer-7 application signatures, they focus mostly on internet application identification (like Facebook, for example). Our focus with NSX at this time is on internal applications hosted by enterprises. This feature enhancement is applicable for both NSX Distributed Firewall as well as Gateway Firewalls. NSX Intelligence NSX Intelligence is geared towards delivering unprecedented visibility for all application traffic inside the network and enabling customers to create micro-segmentation policies to reduce the attack surface. It has a processing pipeline that de-dups, aggregates, and correlates East-West traffic to deliver in-depth visibility. Scalability enhancements for NSX Intelligence As application infrastructure grows rapidly, it is vital that one’s security analytics platform can grow with it. With the new release, we have rearchitected the application platform upon which NSX Intelligence runs — moving from a stand-alone appliance to a containerized micro-service architecture powered by Kubernetes. This architectural change future-proofs the Intelligence data lake and allows us to eventually scale out our solution to n-node Kubernetes clusters. Large Enterprise customers that need visibility for application traffic can confidently deploy NSX Intelligence and leverage the enhanced scale it supports. NSX Gateway Firewall While NSX Distributed Firewall focuses on east-west controls within the network, NSX Gateway Firewall is used for securing ingress and egress traffic into and out of a zone. Gateway Firewall Malware Detection NSX Gateway Firewall in the 3.2 release received significant Advanced Threat Detection capabilities. Gateway Firewall can now identify both known as well as zero-day malware ingressing or egressing the network. This new capability is based on the Gateway Firewall integration with Lastline’s highly reputed dynamic network sandbox technology. Gateway Firewall URL Filtering Internal users and applications reaching out to malicious websites is a huge security risk that must be addressed. In addition, enterprises need to limit internet access to comply with corporate internet usage policies. NSX Gateway Firewall in 3.2 introduces the capability to restrict access to internet sites. Access can be limited based on either the category the URL belongs to, or the “reputation” of the URL. The URL to category and reputation mapping is constantly updated by VMware so customer intent is enforced automatically even after many changes in the internet sites themselves.

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VMware, Vsphere, Hyper-V

ProtonVPN iOS app now supports the OpenVPN protocol

Article | May 2, 2023

Your ProtonVPN iOS app is now better equipped to fight censorship and offers more flexible connection options with the launch of OpenVPN for iOS. The OpenVPN protocol is one of the best VPN protocols because of its flexibility, security, and because it is more resistant to blocks. You now have the option to switch between the faster IKEv2 protocol and the more stable and censorship-resistant OpenVPN protocol.

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Virtual Desktop Strategies

Top 15 Virtualization Events to Attend in 2023

Article | July 26, 2022

Virtualization has become integral to modern computing, enabling organizations to optimize their resources and increase efficiency. Following are the upcoming events taking place in France, China, USA, Netherlands, and Germany, from April 2023 to December 2023. Let's take a closer look at each of these events and know what attendees can expect to gain from them. The following events will provide insight into the growing impact of virtualization on upcoming as well as established organizations. The renowned speakers in the following events will give economic value to the concept of virtualization and how it can transform business operations. By attending these events, participants will gain a deeper understanding of the latest trends, technologies, and strategies in virtualization, as well as the potential benefits and challenges associated with its implementation. 1. 18th Workshop on Virtualization in High-Performance Cloud Computing May 25, 2023 | Hamburg (Germany) The VHPC workshop at the International Supercomputing Conference - High Performance 2023 invites researchers and industrial practitioners to submit original and high-quality papers on virtualization in HPC, containers, virtualization, and cloud computing. The workshop will cover a broad range of topics related to virtualization, including virtualization for scientific computing and big data analytics, virtualization for high-performance computing and data centers, and virtualization for edge, fog computing, and more. The workshop will provide a forum for researchers to present their latest research findings, share ideas, and collaborate on new research directions. 2. VMware Explore 2023 August 5-10, 2023 | Nevada (USA) The VMware Explore 2023 conference is a specialized event focusing on virtualization and cloud computing technologies for data centers and virtual workspace infrastructure. It will cover topics on cloud & edge infrastructure, networking & security, modern applications & cloud management, hybrid workforce, vision & innovation. VMware Explore 2023 will host a community of technology users and leaders involved in enterprise applications, cloud architecture, infrastructure, end users, networking, and security. 3. Data Center World May 8 - 11, 2023 | Texas (USA) This is the only global event that brings together the entire data center industry, making it the go-to resource for anybody looking to optimize their data center strategy. Data Center World is the premier event for digital infrastructure, that will cater to the needs of data center managers, IT executives, and the pioneers who will shape the future of the digital sector. The technologies and concepts for designing, managing, and optimizing data centers will be presented at the event, along with expert advice and guidance. 4. The Fourteenth International Conference on Cloud Computing, GRIDs, and Virtualization June 26 - 30, 2023 | Saint-Laurent-du-Var (France) The Fourteenth International Conference on Cloud Computing, GRIDs, and Virtualization is an upcoming conference that will provide a forum for researchers and practitioners to present and discuss the latest research, trends & practical applications in cloud computing, grids, and virtualization. The conference will cover various topics related to these fields, including cloud security and privacy, cloud storage, cloud economics, and more. The conference will provide a platform for attendees to discuss emerging trends, challenges, and opportunities in these fields, as well as present their research findings and insights. 5. Knowledge 2023 May 16 - 18, 2023 | Las Vegas (United States) The event is organized by ServiceNow, which provides cloud-based IT service management, IT operations management, and IT business management solutions. Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Bill McDermott will deliver the opening keynote address. The event will include a wide range of sessions: Hands-on Labs, Presentations from Experts, Art of the Possible HackZone Demo, Annual Hackathon, Community Meetups, challenges, and more. Attendees will be able to connect with visionaries worldwide and gain new ServiceNow skills and fresh insights into the power of digital transformation. 6. 2023 5TH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON HARDWARE SECURITY AND TRUST (ICHST 2023) July 8 - 10, 2023 | Wuxi (China) The 5th International Conference on Hardware Security and Trust (ICHST 2023) will serve as a workshop for ICSIP 2023 and is sponsored by Southeast University, China, with co-sponsorship from Southeast University Wuxi Campus and the School of Cyber Science and Engineering. ICHST is an annual symposium that will seek to promote the rapid growth of hardware-based security research and development. It will focus on presenting new findings in hardware and system security, covering topics such as secure hardware techniques, tools, design and test methods, architectures, circuits, and applications. 7. .NEXT May 9 - 10, 2023 | Chicago (USA) .NEXT conference is a series of annual events organized by Nutanix, a cloud computing and hyper-converged infrastructure company. It will cover fascinating insights about new work, global supply chains, utopian visions, the metaverse and Web3, smart technology, intelligence, and many more. The conference will typically feature keynote presentations, technical sessions, and hands-on labs focused on cloud computing, data center infrastructure, and digital transformation. Attendees will also be able to experience test-drive demos. 8. Wan Summit: Enterprise Networks Chicago September 28, 2023 | Chicago (USA) Connectivity infrastructure is the main topic of discussion at WAN Summit, an invitation-only conference for network and engineering professionals shaping the future of the workplace. In order to help businesses, provide a better experience for their customers, the WAN Summit will discuss the issues that persist in the networking department. The event will have sessions as network manager focus, enterprise case studies, exhibition and networking drinks reception, and so on. 9. Black Hat USA August 5 -10, 2023 | Nevada (USA) This year marks the 26th annual Black Hat USA conference, which will be held at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas. Attendees of all experience levels can participate in four days of intensive cybersecurity training. More than a hundred carefully-chosen briefings, hundreds of open-source tool demonstrations in Arsenal, a robust business hall, networking and social events, and much more will fill the two days of the main conference. This year, Black Hat will also debut a live, in-person Certification program that will last for a whole day. 10. Gartner IT Symposium | Xpo October 16 -19, 2023 | Orlando (USA) The strategic concerns of enterprise CIOs and their executive teams are the focus of the Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo. At the Gartner IT Symposium, a worldwide network of experts and peers will talk about game-changing innovations. Chief Information Officers and other IT executives will discuss the latest developments in the fields of accelerating business transformation, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, customer experience, data analytics, executive leadership, and many other topics that will shape the future of IT and business. 11. Container Days September 11 -13, 2023 | Hamburg (Germany) An amazing learning experience on Kubernetes, Cloud Native, Container Security, DevOps, GitOps, Edge Computing, and more is available at CDS, where the CDS family increases yearly. Global tycoons will gather in person and online to share insights, make connections, and do business. Opportunities to meet like-minded people and open discussion forums are favorites among open-source and cloud-native project fans. More in-depth technical presentations and engaging panel discussions will be live across five stages this year. 12. Big Data Expo September 12 - 13, 2023 | Utrecht (Netherlands) Supply and demand in the big data industry are finally brought together at Big Data Expo. This is the only conference in the Benelux region covering every data management facet. Exhibitors are prioritized who regularly engage in data aggregation, generation, analysis, optimization, and application across a variety of scales and contexts. The two-day conference will cover various topics, from cloud computing and data visualization to data security and machine learning/artificial intelligence. If you're interested in data, the Big Data Expo is the place to be. 13. Red Hat Summit May 23 - 25, 2023 | Massachusetts (USA) The seminars, workshops, demos, laboratories, and training opportunities at Red Hat Summit 2023 in Boston (Massachusetts), will be invaluable to the individuals and their teams. In addition, this year's event will be held in conjunction with AnsibleFest, adding automation to the diverse mix of offerings that are used to address a world of IT challenges, in addition to keynotes, customer and partner stories, topics, and tracks designed to help you make the most of hybrid cloud technology. Participants will be able to watch or rewatch major announcements and view dozens of new sessions and recorded sessions from Boston—at no cost to you. 14. TechNet Cyber 2023 May 2 -4, 2023 | Baltimore convention center, Maryland (USA) TechNet Cyber is the best chance to showcase products & services to the nation's top network security, operations, and defense decision-makers. The U.S. Defense Information Systems Agency is always on the lookout for fresh concepts to help standardize and streamline cyber operations throughout the Department of Defense and the armed forces' various components. To tackle global security concerns and successfully function in a digital world, AFCEA's TechNet Cyber acts as a focal point for a government-wide effort to consolidate the policy, strategic architecture, operations, and C2, as well as the combined capabilities necessary to do so. 15. IEEE International Conference On Smart Information Systems and Technologies May 4 - 6, 2023 | Scientific Society (Kazakhstan) The 2023 IEEE SIST International Conference, technically co-sponsored by the IEEE Ukraine Section, is an essential event in the scientific society of Kazakhstan. Professionals, researchers, scientists, specialists, and students from a unique opportunity for participants to expand their knowledge and various areas of the IT industry from around the globe will attend this conference. The conference will offer perspectives on specific topics, and contribute to finding solutions to current IT trends. Additionally, the conference will be covering several research areas, including technology and engineering management, governance, finance, economy, and more. Conclusion The events will help organizations capitalize on the opportunities presented by virtualization and remain ahead of the curve in today's rapidly evolving digital landscape. The purpose of the events is to facilitate collaboration, the exchange of knowledge, and the discussion of innovative solutions for virtualized computing systems of the future.

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Virtual Desktop Tools, Server Hypervisors

Virtual Machine Security Risks and Mitigation in Cloud Computing

Article | April 28, 2023

Analyzing risks and implementing advanced mitigation strategies: Safeguard critical data, fortify defenses, and stay ahead of emerging threats in the dynamic realm of virtual machines in cloud. Contents 1. Introduction 2. 10 Security Risks Associated with Virtual Machines in Cloud Computing 3. Best Practices to Avoid Security Compromise 4. Conclusion 1. Introduction Cloud computing has revolutionized the way businesses operate by providing flexible, scalable, and cost-effective infrastructure for running applications and services. Virtual machines (VMs) are a key component of cloud computing, allowing multiple virtual machines to run on a single physical machine. However, the use of virtual machines in cloud computing introduces new security risks that need to be addressed to ensure the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of data and services. Effective VM security in the cloud requires a comprehensive approach that involves cloud providers and users working together to identify and address potential virtual machine security threats. By implementing these best practices and maintaining a focus on security, cloud computing can provide a secure and reliable platform for businesses to run their applications and services. 2. 10 Security Risks Associated with Virtual Machines in Cloud Computing Denial of Service (DoS) attacks: These are attacks that aim to disrupt the availability of a VM or the entire cloud infrastructure by overwhelming the system with traffic or resource requests. Insecure APIs: Cloud providers often expose APIs that allow users to manage their VMs. If these APIs are not properly secured, attackers can exploit them to gain unauthorized access to VMs or manipulate their configurations. Data leakage: Virtual machines can store sensitive data such as customer information or intellectual property. If not secured, this data can be exposed to unauthorized access or leakage. Shared resources: VMs in cloud environments often share physical resources such as memory, CPU, and network interfaces. If these resources are not isolated, a compromised VM can potentially affect the security and performance of other VMs running on the same physical host. Lack of visibility: Virtual machines in cloud environments can be more difficult to monitor than physical machines. This can make it harder to detect security incidents or anomalous behavior. Insufficient logging and auditing: If cloud providers do not implement appropriate logging and auditing mechanisms, it can be difficult to determine the cause and scope of a security incident. VM escape: This is when an attacker gains access to the hypervisor layer and then escapes into the host operating system or other VMs running on the same physical host. Side-channel attacks: This is when an attacker exploits the physical characteristics of the hardware to gain unauthorized access to a VM. Examples of side-channel attacks include timing attacks, power analysis attacks, and electromagnetic attacks. Malware attacks: VMs can be infected with malware, just like physical machines. Malware can be used to steal data, launch attacks on other VMs or systems, or disrupt the functioning of the VM. Insider threats: Malicious insiders can exploit their access to VMs to steal data, modify configurations, or launch attacks. 3. Best Practices to Avoid Security Compromise To mitigate these risks, there are several virtual machine security guidelines that cloud service providers and users can follow: Keep software up-to-date: Regularly updating software and security patches for virtual machines is crucial in preventing known vulnerabilities from being exploited by hackers. Software updates fix bugs and security flaws that could allow unauthorized access, data breaches, or malware attacks. According to a study, 60% of data breaches are caused by vulnerabilities that were not patched or updated in a timely manner.(Source: Ponemon Institute) Use secure hypervisors: A hypervisor is a software layer that enables multiple virtual machines to run on a single physical server. Secure hypervisors are designed to prevent unauthorized access to virtual machines and protect them from potential security threats. When choosing a hypervisor, it is important to select one that has undergone rigorous testing and meets industry standards for security. In 2018, a group of researchers discovered a new type of attack called "Foreshadow" (also known as L1 Terminal Fault). The attack exploits vulnerabilities in Intel processors and can be used to steal sensitive data from virtual machines running on the same physical host. Secure hypervisors that have implemented hardware-based security features can provide protection against Foreshadow and similar attacks. (Source: Foreshadow) Implement strong access controls: Access control is the practice of restricting access to virtual machines to authorized users. Multi-factor authentication adds an extra layer of security by requiring users to provide more than one type of authentication method before accessing VMs. Strong access controls limit the risk of unauthorized access and can help prevent data breaches. According to a survey, organizations that implemented multi-factor authentication saw a 98% reduction in the risk of phishing-related account breaches. (Source: Duo Security) Monitor VMs for anomalous behavior: Monitoring virtual machines for unusual or unexpected behavior is an essential security practice. This includes monitoring network traffic, processes running on the VM, and other metrics that can help detect potential security incidents. By monitoring VMs, security teams can detect and respond to security threats before they can cause damage. A study found that 90% of organizations that implemented a virtualized environment experienced security benefits, such as improved visibility into security threats and faster incident response times. (Source: VMware) Use Encryption: Encryption is the process of encoding information in such a way that only authorized parties can access it. Encrypting data both in transit and at rest protects it from interception or theft by hackers. This can be achieved using industry-standard encryption protocols and technologies. According to a report by, the average cost of a data breach in 2020 was $3.86 million. The report also found that organizations that implemented encryption had a lower average cost of a data breach compared to those that did not (Source: IBM) Segregate VMs: Segregating virtual machines is the practice of keeping sensitive VMs separate from less sensitive ones. This reduces the risk of lateral movement, which is when a hacker gains access to one VM and uses it as a stepping stone to gain access to other VMs in the same environment. Segregating VMs helps to minimize the risk of data breaches and limit the potential impact of a security incident. A study found that organizations that implemented a virtualized environment without adequate segregation and access controls were more vulnerable to VM security breaches and data loss. (Source: Ponemon Institute) Regularly Back-up VMs: Regularly backing up virtual machines is a critical security practice that can help mitigate the impact of malware attacks, system failures, or other security incidents. Backups should be stored securely and tested regularly to ensure that they can be restored quickly in the event of a security incident. A survey conducted found that 42% of organizations experienced a data loss event in 2020 with the most common cause being accidental deletion by an employee (29%). (Source: Veeam) 4. Conclusion The complexity of cloud environments and the shared responsibility model for security require organizations to adopt a comprehensive security approach that spans multiple infrastructure layers, from the physical to the application layer. The future of virtual machine security concern in cloud computing will require continued innovation and adaptation to new threats and vulnerabilities. As a result, organizations must remain vigilant and proactive in their security efforts, leveraging the latest technologies and best practices to protect their virtual machines, the sensitive data and resources they contain.

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Spotlight

Curvature

Curvature is the world’s leading global technology equipment and services company. Based in Santa Barbara, California, Curvature has revolutionized the pre-owned market of networking and data center equipment, providing customers with global solutions from corporate locations in the Americas, Europe and Asia.

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Virtual Desktop Tools, Virtual Desktop Strategies, Server Virtualization

Netskope Delivers the Next Evolution in Digital Experience Management for SASE with Proactive DEM

PR Newswire | September 01, 2023

Netskope, a leader in Secure Access Service Edge (SASE), today announced the launch of Proactive Digital Experience Management (DEM) for SASE, elevating best practice from the current reactive monitoring tools to proactive user experience management. Proactive DEM provides experience management capabilities across the entire SASE architecture, including Netskope Intelligent SSE, Netskope Borderless SD-WAN and Netskope NewEdge global infrastructure. Digital Experience Management technology has become increasingly crucial amid digital business transformation, with organizations seeking to enhance customer experiences and improve employee engagement. With hybrid work and cloud infrastructure now the norm globally, organizations have struggled to ensure consistent and optimized experiences alongside stringent security requirements. Gartner predicts that "by 2026, at least 60% of I&O leaders will use DEM to measure application, services and endpoint performance from the user's viewpoint, up from less than 20% in 2021." However, monitoring applications, services, and networks is only part of a modern DEM experience, and so Netskope Proactive DEM goes beyond observation, providing Machine Learning (ML)-driven functionality to anticipate, and automatically remediate, problems. Sanjay Beri, CEO and co-founder of Netskope commented, "Ensuring a constantly optimized experience is essential for organizations looking to support the best productivity returns for hybrid workers and modern cloud infrastructure, but monitoring alone is not enough. Customers have told us of the challenges they face managing a multi-vendor cloud ecosystem and so we have yet again innovated beyond industry standards, providing experience management that can both monitor and proactively remediate." For issue identification, Netskope Proactive DEM uniquely combines Synthetic Monitoring with Real User monitoring, creating SMART monitoring (Synthetic Monitoring Augmentation for Real Traffic). This enables full end-to-end 'hop-by-hop' visibility of data, and the proactive identification of experience-impacting events. SMART monitoring enables organizations to anticipate potential events that might impact upon network and application experience. While most SASE vendors rely on "gray cloud" infrastructure - built on public cloud - which limits their ability to granularly identify and control any issues, Proactive DEM leverages Netskope NewEdge - the industry's largest private cloud infrastructure - to deliver 360 visibility and control of end-to-end user experience while providing mitigation of issues, including using various self-healing mechanisms, before the user recognizes their experience has degraded. About Netskope Netskope, a global SASE leader, helps organizations apply zero trust principles and AI/ML innovations to protect data and defend against cyber threats. Fast and easy to use, the Netskope platform provides optimized access and real-time security for people, devices, and data anywhere they go. Netskope helps customers reduce risk, accelerate performance, and get unrivaled visibility into any cloud, web, and private application activity. Thousands of customers trust Netskope and its powerful NewEdge network to address evolving threats, new risks, technology shifts, organizational and network changes, and new regulatory requirements.

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Virtual Desktop Tools, Server Hypervisors

Meter Partners with Cloudflare to Launch DNS Security

Business Wire | August 31, 2023

Meter, Inc., a leader in Network as a Service (NaaS) for businesses, today announced DNS Security, built in partnership with Cloudflare, the security, performance, and reliability company. Meter DNS Security is now widely available for all Meter Network customers, expanding Meter’s existing NaaS offering and saving teams both time and money, while also improving overall network performance and security, powered by Cloudflare’s Zero Trust platform. “With the number of devices on a network expected to triple by 2030, modern businesses and organizations demand enterprise network controls to ensure safety and peak performance for business critical functions,” said Anil Varanasi, CEO and co-founder of Meter. “Meter DNS Security is the latest example of how we’re continuing to offer our customers enterprise level networks end-to-end. Through our partnership with Cloudflare, we’re enhancing our capabilities to meet the needs of IT professionals at industrial warehouses, educational institutions, security firms, and more.” Meter DNS Security eliminates the hassle of having multiple vendors, by providing content filtering at several layers to all customers within the Meter Dashboard in partnership with one of the best providers in the world. “We’re proud to have Meter leveraging Cloudflare’s Zero Trust platform in a new way, offering our DNS filtering feature natively built into their Meter Dashboard,” said John Graham-Cumming, CTO, Cloudflare. “By building on Cloudflare's platform, Meter enables customers to manage their team’s operations at scale, as well as effectively enforce global corporate policies across diverse corporate spaces, such as offices, schools, and warehouses.” In addition to the ease and scalability of Meter DNS Security, users are ensuring security through enhanced compliance by blocking access to known malicious websites and bad actors. The integration and partnership with Cloudflare provides customers with faster DNS response times, while optimizing network performance by limiting access to high-bandwidth websites and services. Real world examples of this process include, but are not limited to: Ensuring a safe browsing environment at schools by filtering out age inappropriate content Optimizing network performance for warehouses by filtering high bandwidth activities like video streaming Maintaining high security and compliance standards by filtering malicious or illegal content “Tishman Speyer has successfully partnered with Meter to streamline the networking and Wi-Fi experience for our customers,” said Simon Okunev, Managing Director and Chief Information Officer, Tishman Speyer. “The addition of Meter’s DNS Security feature, powered by Cloudflare, will further benefit our customers by providing an additional layer of security.” About Cloudflare Cloudflare, Inc. is on a mission to help build a better Internet. Cloudflare’s suite of products protect and accelerate any Internet application online without adding hardware, installing software, or changing a line of code. Internet properties powered by Cloudflare have all web traffic routed through its intelligent global network, which gets smarter with every request. As a result, they see significant improvement in performance and a decrease in spam and other attacks. Cloudflare was awarded by Reuters Events for Global Responsible Business in 2020, named to Fast Company's Most Innovative Companies in 2021, and ranked among Newsweek's Top 100 Most Loved Workplaces in 2022.

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Server Hypervisors, Vsphere

Napatech Leverages Latest Intel Agilex® FPGA to Launch Industry's first 400Gbps SmartNIC Solutions

prnewswire | August 29, 2023

Napatech™ (OSLO: NAPA.OL), a leading provider of programmable Smart Network Interface Cards (SmartNICs) and Infrastructure Processing Units (IPU) used in cloud, enterprise and telecom datacenter networks, today announced the availability of the Napatech's first 400Gbps programmable SmartNIC solutions, leveraging the latest Intel Agilex® 7 FPGAs to deliver best-in-class performance for applications in security, cloud services, network monitoring and recording. Enterprises and OEMs providing high-performance solutions for network monitoring and recording require NICs with a performance level that matches the high PCI Express (PCIe) bandwidth available in the latest servers such as those based on 4th Gen Intel Xeon® Scalable Processors. The new Napatech NT400 SmartNIC platform, based on the Intel® FPGA SmartNIC N6000-PL Platform, addresses this need through a PCIe Gen 4 16-lane host interface which enables full-duplex 2x100Gbps traffic between network ports and host applications. Similarly, for applications like the 5G packet core in telecom infrastructure that require high-bandwidth inline processing of network data, the NT400 platform sustains a total 400G of traffic over tens of millions of flows. The NT400 programmable SmartNIC platform includes two QSFP56 network ports, supporting up to 2x200G traffic with the flexibility to configure 10G, 25G, 40G, 50G, 100G and 200G network links. The SmartNIC hardware is complemented by Napatech's portfolio of production-grade software packages, including Link-Capture™ for use cases such as network monitoring and recording, Link-Virtualization™ that provides a virtualized data plane for cloud services and Link-Inline™ for inline applications such as 5G User Plane Function (UPF). These integrated solutions deliver a true "IT experience" whereby the user just installs the card and the software, immediately achieving seamless acceleration of their application with no requirement to directly program the SmartNIC itself. At the core of the NT400 platform is the Intel Agilex 7 FPGA F-Tile chiplet, which incorporates a configurable, hardened Ethernet protocol stack for supporting rates from 10G to 400G. Napatech chose the Intel Agilex 7 FPGA for a host of reasons, including scalability options that allow support for five different configurations that meet various price, performance, power and feature goals, tailored to specific customer applications and use cases. The F-Tile features are critical in enabling the NT400 to operate within the space and power limitations of standard servers deployed in network appliances, data centers and edge locations. "As the networking landscape continues to evolve, SmartNICs emerge as the predominant growth catalyst in the expansive NIC market, poised to reach $3.3 billion annually by 2025" said Manoj Sukumaran, Principal Analyst for Datacenter Compute and Networking at Omdia. "High bandwidth programmable Ethernet adapters require very fine optimization in hardware and software to ensure deterministic and predictable processing time and making them suitable for real-time networking applications. Napatech is among the very few vendors who could provide highly optimized SmartNICs and software solutions leveraging FPGAs from vendors like Intel, and deliver highly efficient network offload capabilities" he added. "The NT400 platform represents the latest generation within our portfolio of SmartNIC solutions," said Jarrod Siket, Chief Marketing Officer at Napatech. "We will deliver multiple SKUs based on this platform, providing products with memory configurations as well features like time synchronization and management ports that are precisely tuned to the requirements of our customers' applications, all packaged with the applicable production-grade software." "We are delighted to see Napatech choose the Intel Agilex 7 FPGA for their leading-edge SmartNIC solutions," said Mike Fitton, Vice President Programmable Solutions Group and General Manager, Network Business Division at Intel. "The combination of our FPGAs, which deliver high performance, and power efficiency plus a rich feature set for the most demanding applications, together with Napatech's production-grade hardware and software, helps ensure that customers can deliver leading solutions for a wide range of enterprise and telecom applications." About Napatech Napatech is the leading supplier of SmartNIC solutions used in cloud, enterprise, and telecom datacenters. Through commercial-grade software suites integrated with high-performance hardware, Napatech accelerates network infrastructure and security workloads to deliver best-in-class system-level performance while maximizing the availability of server compute resources for applications and services.

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Virtual Desktop Tools, Virtual Desktop Strategies, Server Virtualization

Netskope Delivers the Next Evolution in Digital Experience Management for SASE with Proactive DEM

PR Newswire | September 01, 2023

Netskope, a leader in Secure Access Service Edge (SASE), today announced the launch of Proactive Digital Experience Management (DEM) for SASE, elevating best practice from the current reactive monitoring tools to proactive user experience management. Proactive DEM provides experience management capabilities across the entire SASE architecture, including Netskope Intelligent SSE, Netskope Borderless SD-WAN and Netskope NewEdge global infrastructure. Digital Experience Management technology has become increasingly crucial amid digital business transformation, with organizations seeking to enhance customer experiences and improve employee engagement. With hybrid work and cloud infrastructure now the norm globally, organizations have struggled to ensure consistent and optimized experiences alongside stringent security requirements. Gartner predicts that "by 2026, at least 60% of I&O leaders will use DEM to measure application, services and endpoint performance from the user's viewpoint, up from less than 20% in 2021." However, monitoring applications, services, and networks is only part of a modern DEM experience, and so Netskope Proactive DEM goes beyond observation, providing Machine Learning (ML)-driven functionality to anticipate, and automatically remediate, problems. Sanjay Beri, CEO and co-founder of Netskope commented, "Ensuring a constantly optimized experience is essential for organizations looking to support the best productivity returns for hybrid workers and modern cloud infrastructure, but monitoring alone is not enough. Customers have told us of the challenges they face managing a multi-vendor cloud ecosystem and so we have yet again innovated beyond industry standards, providing experience management that can both monitor and proactively remediate." For issue identification, Netskope Proactive DEM uniquely combines Synthetic Monitoring with Real User monitoring, creating SMART monitoring (Synthetic Monitoring Augmentation for Real Traffic). This enables full end-to-end 'hop-by-hop' visibility of data, and the proactive identification of experience-impacting events. SMART monitoring enables organizations to anticipate potential events that might impact upon network and application experience. While most SASE vendors rely on "gray cloud" infrastructure - built on public cloud - which limits their ability to granularly identify and control any issues, Proactive DEM leverages Netskope NewEdge - the industry's largest private cloud infrastructure - to deliver 360 visibility and control of end-to-end user experience while providing mitigation of issues, including using various self-healing mechanisms, before the user recognizes their experience has degraded. About Netskope Netskope, a global SASE leader, helps organizations apply zero trust principles and AI/ML innovations to protect data and defend against cyber threats. Fast and easy to use, the Netskope platform provides optimized access and real-time security for people, devices, and data anywhere they go. Netskope helps customers reduce risk, accelerate performance, and get unrivaled visibility into any cloud, web, and private application activity. Thousands of customers trust Netskope and its powerful NewEdge network to address evolving threats, new risks, technology shifts, organizational and network changes, and new regulatory requirements.

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Virtual Desktop Tools, Server Hypervisors

Meter Partners with Cloudflare to Launch DNS Security

Business Wire | August 31, 2023

Meter, Inc., a leader in Network as a Service (NaaS) for businesses, today announced DNS Security, built in partnership with Cloudflare, the security, performance, and reliability company. Meter DNS Security is now widely available for all Meter Network customers, expanding Meter’s existing NaaS offering and saving teams both time and money, while also improving overall network performance and security, powered by Cloudflare’s Zero Trust platform. “With the number of devices on a network expected to triple by 2030, modern businesses and organizations demand enterprise network controls to ensure safety and peak performance for business critical functions,” said Anil Varanasi, CEO and co-founder of Meter. “Meter DNS Security is the latest example of how we’re continuing to offer our customers enterprise level networks end-to-end. Through our partnership with Cloudflare, we’re enhancing our capabilities to meet the needs of IT professionals at industrial warehouses, educational institutions, security firms, and more.” Meter DNS Security eliminates the hassle of having multiple vendors, by providing content filtering at several layers to all customers within the Meter Dashboard in partnership with one of the best providers in the world. “We’re proud to have Meter leveraging Cloudflare’s Zero Trust platform in a new way, offering our DNS filtering feature natively built into their Meter Dashboard,” said John Graham-Cumming, CTO, Cloudflare. “By building on Cloudflare's platform, Meter enables customers to manage their team’s operations at scale, as well as effectively enforce global corporate policies across diverse corporate spaces, such as offices, schools, and warehouses.” In addition to the ease and scalability of Meter DNS Security, users are ensuring security through enhanced compliance by blocking access to known malicious websites and bad actors. The integration and partnership with Cloudflare provides customers with faster DNS response times, while optimizing network performance by limiting access to high-bandwidth websites and services. Real world examples of this process include, but are not limited to: Ensuring a safe browsing environment at schools by filtering out age inappropriate content Optimizing network performance for warehouses by filtering high bandwidth activities like video streaming Maintaining high security and compliance standards by filtering malicious or illegal content “Tishman Speyer has successfully partnered with Meter to streamline the networking and Wi-Fi experience for our customers,” said Simon Okunev, Managing Director and Chief Information Officer, Tishman Speyer. “The addition of Meter’s DNS Security feature, powered by Cloudflare, will further benefit our customers by providing an additional layer of security.” About Cloudflare Cloudflare, Inc. is on a mission to help build a better Internet. Cloudflare’s suite of products protect and accelerate any Internet application online without adding hardware, installing software, or changing a line of code. Internet properties powered by Cloudflare have all web traffic routed through its intelligent global network, which gets smarter with every request. As a result, they see significant improvement in performance and a decrease in spam and other attacks. Cloudflare was awarded by Reuters Events for Global Responsible Business in 2020, named to Fast Company's Most Innovative Companies in 2021, and ranked among Newsweek's Top 100 Most Loved Workplaces in 2022.

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Server Hypervisors, Vsphere

Napatech Leverages Latest Intel Agilex® FPGA to Launch Industry's first 400Gbps SmartNIC Solutions

prnewswire | August 29, 2023

Napatech™ (OSLO: NAPA.OL), a leading provider of programmable Smart Network Interface Cards (SmartNICs) and Infrastructure Processing Units (IPU) used in cloud, enterprise and telecom datacenter networks, today announced the availability of the Napatech's first 400Gbps programmable SmartNIC solutions, leveraging the latest Intel Agilex® 7 FPGAs to deliver best-in-class performance for applications in security, cloud services, network monitoring and recording. Enterprises and OEMs providing high-performance solutions for network monitoring and recording require NICs with a performance level that matches the high PCI Express (PCIe) bandwidth available in the latest servers such as those based on 4th Gen Intel Xeon® Scalable Processors. The new Napatech NT400 SmartNIC platform, based on the Intel® FPGA SmartNIC N6000-PL Platform, addresses this need through a PCIe Gen 4 16-lane host interface which enables full-duplex 2x100Gbps traffic between network ports and host applications. Similarly, for applications like the 5G packet core in telecom infrastructure that require high-bandwidth inline processing of network data, the NT400 platform sustains a total 400G of traffic over tens of millions of flows. The NT400 programmable SmartNIC platform includes two QSFP56 network ports, supporting up to 2x200G traffic with the flexibility to configure 10G, 25G, 40G, 50G, 100G and 200G network links. The SmartNIC hardware is complemented by Napatech's portfolio of production-grade software packages, including Link-Capture™ for use cases such as network monitoring and recording, Link-Virtualization™ that provides a virtualized data plane for cloud services and Link-Inline™ for inline applications such as 5G User Plane Function (UPF). These integrated solutions deliver a true "IT experience" whereby the user just installs the card and the software, immediately achieving seamless acceleration of their application with no requirement to directly program the SmartNIC itself. At the core of the NT400 platform is the Intel Agilex 7 FPGA F-Tile chiplet, which incorporates a configurable, hardened Ethernet protocol stack for supporting rates from 10G to 400G. Napatech chose the Intel Agilex 7 FPGA for a host of reasons, including scalability options that allow support for five different configurations that meet various price, performance, power and feature goals, tailored to specific customer applications and use cases. The F-Tile features are critical in enabling the NT400 to operate within the space and power limitations of standard servers deployed in network appliances, data centers and edge locations. "As the networking landscape continues to evolve, SmartNICs emerge as the predominant growth catalyst in the expansive NIC market, poised to reach $3.3 billion annually by 2025" said Manoj Sukumaran, Principal Analyst for Datacenter Compute and Networking at Omdia. "High bandwidth programmable Ethernet adapters require very fine optimization in hardware and software to ensure deterministic and predictable processing time and making them suitable for real-time networking applications. Napatech is among the very few vendors who could provide highly optimized SmartNICs and software solutions leveraging FPGAs from vendors like Intel, and deliver highly efficient network offload capabilities" he added. "The NT400 platform represents the latest generation within our portfolio of SmartNIC solutions," said Jarrod Siket, Chief Marketing Officer at Napatech. "We will deliver multiple SKUs based on this platform, providing products with memory configurations as well features like time synchronization and management ports that are precisely tuned to the requirements of our customers' applications, all packaged with the applicable production-grade software." "We are delighted to see Napatech choose the Intel Agilex 7 FPGA for their leading-edge SmartNIC solutions," said Mike Fitton, Vice President Programmable Solutions Group and General Manager, Network Business Division at Intel. "The combination of our FPGAs, which deliver high performance, and power efficiency plus a rich feature set for the most demanding applications, together with Napatech's production-grade hardware and software, helps ensure that customers can deliver leading solutions for a wide range of enterprise and telecom applications." About Napatech Napatech is the leading supplier of SmartNIC solutions used in cloud, enterprise, and telecom datacenters. Through commercial-grade software suites integrated with high-performance hardware, Napatech accelerates network infrastructure and security workloads to deliver best-in-class system-level performance while maximizing the availability of server compute resources for applications and services.

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